


Facets

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: BDSM, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-12
Updated: 2010-05-12
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:02:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why is the Doctor like this? What has gone wrong with his regeneration that he’s terribly rude, more arrogant than God himself, can’t settle into any kind of dress sense, and actually wants to hurt his companion? He thinks he needs to take Peri home, and maybe that will make everything better. But maybe Peri holds the key to understanding his new persona. Six/Peri and a viable explanation for That Coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I’ve gotten the Doctor into bed without much discussion of Gallifreyan sexuality, mainly because it’s not necessary at this point for this story. That said, I don’t think the Doctor sleeps with many of his companions, or very often, so this particular instance is even more impressive than it may seem. The tag "PWP" is misleading, as there actually is quite a lot of plot, it's just an inherantly sexual one.

  
  
“Where are we?” Peri asked.   
  
“Earth,” the Doctor said quietly. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet for the last two hours. Of course, they’d had an incredible fight.   
  
She couldn’t even remember what it had been about. She thought it had started with his being rude to someone in a shopping mall on Praxis, which had nearly resulted in a riot, but Praxis was the kind of place where riots happened regularly, so it was hard to pin it to that.   
  
It might have drawn from her losing her TARDIS key somewhere in the middle of the riot, and the Doctor having to leap into the fray to retrieve it, but she wasn’t sure that was it, either.   
  
It might have been because he’d then lost his latest cat pin in the confusion, and when Peri bought him another one all he had done was insult it, because it wasn’t based off an earthly cat, and therefore wasn’t a cat at all.   
  
Once he’d done that it had started her crying, and once she did that it had made him even angrier, until he’d actually picked her up and dragged her back to the TARDIS and dumped her on the ground in a heap, and it hurt, and she’d yelled at him, and he’d shouted at her, backing her against the wall until she was so frightened she’d started to tremble, and she told him it was all his fault for being rude on Praxis in the first place, and he’d thrown up his hands and stormed out of the room.   
  
But the truth of the matter was, they’d been fighting even before the riot, and she wasn’t sure how that had started, either.   
  
Maybe another adventure was what they needed. “Earth?” Peri asked, excited. Was she about to meet Attila the Hun? Or some futuristic overlord? “When?”   
  
The Doctor would not look at her. “Just a few days after you left,” he said.   
  
Peri rolled her eyes. “Boring! Unless you got a call or something. Or are we in Buenos Ares?”   
  
“No,” said the Doctor. He finally looked at her. “I’m sending you home.”   
  
Peri’s mouth opened in horror. “What?” she screeched.   
  
The Doctor cringed. “You really have the most annoyingly adenoidal voice,” he snapped. “I’m sick of listening to it. Go and grab whatever you want and get out of my TARDIS.”   
  
Peri felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. “You can’t mean that,” she said.   
  
“I assure you, I do. Do you think I don’t know my own mind? I’m not having you on the TARDIS with me one more hour, do you hear me?”   
  
“What are you talking about? What did I do?”   
  
“What haven’t you done?” the Doctor snapped. “You insult me, you annoy me, you cast aspersions on my dress sense, and you don’t even know what a cat looks like! I can’t put up with you anymore. This is it, it’s over, I’m done, you’re through.” He opened the door to the TARDIS. “Get out.”   
  
“That’s it?” Peri asked. “After all this, after Androzani and the twins and Praxis you’re just telling me to get out?”   
  
“Have you no ears?” the Doctor asked. He waved his arms at her. “Shoo! Shoo!” He paused. “Is there anything you need?”   
  
“No,” Peri snapped. “There isn’t. You think I’d need YOUR help on MY planet? Well, I don’t!”   
  
“Good!”   
  
“Fine.”   
  
“Great!”   
  
“Wonderful!” Peri turned on her heel. “I never liked you anyway,” she snapped.   
  
“Which just goes to show your poor judgement,” the Doctor retorted.   
  
“I wish you really had died!” Peri shouted. Then she stepped out of the TARDIS and out of his life forever.   
  
She took two breaths, and then stepped right back in. Absolutely not! There was no way she was just going to walk out without giving him a piece of her mind!   
  
To her surprise, the Doctor had already left the console room. Just like him! Turn his back when she wanted to yell at him! But... why hadn’t he set the TARDIS moving...?  
  
It didn’t matter. Peri stomped through the TARDIS in a huff. She was going to find him and let him know just what an arrogant, abrasive, awful man he had become. She knew just what to do. She was going to insult him. Invoke his last face — that always got his back up. How dare he? How dare he just dump her back on Earth like a pile of dirty laundry! That man deserved a good punch in the nose, that’s what he deserved! She intended to yell at him at least once more before he... abandoned her... like everyone always abandoned her....   
  
The emptiness inside threatened to overwhelm her, so she hunched it down beneath her anger again. “Doctor!” she shouted, looking into the rooms that he usually was in. Kitchens, library, billiard room, nothing, nothing, nothing.   
  
Peri was getting, if possible, even angrier when she passed the half open door of what had until fifteen minutes ago been her own room, and heard a sound inside it. Already rearranging the furniture, was he? Probably painting the walls neon orange! Well, she’d show him! She flung the door open wider.   
  
The first thing she saw was the Doctor’s coat, mainly because it was always the first thing that drew the eye when anyone entered a room. It was hanging on the back of a chair. But the second thing she saw was the Doctor himself, curled up at the head of her bed, clutching her pillow, and... crying.   
  
He was utterly silent and almost perfectly still, but his round, full lipped face was tight, and those were unmistakably tears on his cheeks. He didn’t see her. She froze in the doorway, her anger dying in her throat. She stood there for a long time, wondering if this was even real. The Doctor couldn’t possibly cry. She was so used to his bluster and his arrogance and his loudmouthed swagger that it had never occurred to her there was anything vulnerable underneath it. “Doctor?” she said gently.   
  
He opened his eyes and sat up instantly, and she wondered if she’d been mistaken, because how could a face go from so sad to so furious in a blink? There was no trace of tears now. “What are you doing here?” he snapped. “Get out! Get out, get out!”   
  
Peri was at a loss. All her anger had melted at the sight of him in such turmoil, and now she didn’t have a retort.   
  
The Doctor surged from the bed. “I said get out!” he yelled, towering over her. He was always standing just a little too close, just invading her personal space. “I can’t have you around, I can’t have anything to do with you, you disgust me!”   
  
“I disgust YOU?” Perry snorted, glaring back into his face. “That’s rich. You’re the one who’s rude and loud and pushing people around all the time!”   
  
“People?” the Doctor snorted. “What people!”   
  
“Me!” Peri said.   
  
“You are not people.” The Doctor glared at her. “You are a pernicious, pitiful, pathetic Peri, not even worthy of pushing papers, let alone soaring through the stars!”   
  
“Then why are you in here?” Peri demanded.   
  
The Doctor cringed, and she searched his eyes. No — she hadn’t been mistaken. There was still the glimmer of a tear in the corner of his eye. Could he possibly have been... missing her? Or thinking about missing her, since she’d barely left. But he glared down at her, his face a mask of hatred, and he didn’t answer her question. “I told you to get out,” he growled.   
  
“And why?” Peri asked. “Because you’ve got PMS or something? What has happened today that’s different from any other day?”   
  
“Nothing,” the Doctor snapped, turning away from her. He started to pace. “It’s been exactly the same, ever since Androzani, and it’s doubtful and dreadful and depressing, and this futile fighting I pin on Peri!” He pointed at her theatrically.   
  
Peri rolled her eyes. When the Doctor got angry anymore he tended to descend into alliterations and paraphrased literary references, and it was exceedingly annoying. “You’re the one who keeps starting fights!” Peri pointed out.   
  
“Only because you’re the worst most wretched woman in the history of history!” the Doctor threw up his hands.   
  
“How dare you?” Peri scoffed at him. “My God, you are appalling! I don’t know how you can pretend you’re the same person. I do NOT like you!”   
  
“Neither do I!” the Doctor shouted back.   
  
“I don’t care if you like me or not!” Peri retorted, but the Doctor was standing stock still, his face stricken. She blinked. “But that wasn’t what you said,” she realized.   
  
The Doctor turned away and began to pace again, refusing to look at her.   
  
“You just said you don’t like yourself,” Peri said. “Or was that a mistake?”   
  
He didn’t exactly answer her. “It’s never been like this,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “It always starts to make sense. Why hasn’t it? Why is it like this?” He turned to Peri. “I feel like I’m going mad.”  
  
Peri shivered. “Are you... are you having one of your fits again?” she asked. He hadn’t had any — or seemed to have any — since the first couple of days after his regeneration, but those had been horrific. Shouting at her, ranting and raving, even... that moment with his hands on her throat.... She kept trying not to think about that.   
  
“Fits,” the Doctor glared. “Fits? Fits! You think I’m having fits?” He threw up his hands. “You think all of this is because I’m still unsettled?”   
  
“Well, aren’t you?”   
  
“No!” the Doctor shouted. “I’ve SETTLED weeks ago!” He took to pacing again. “This isn’t regeneration reactivity. Or if it is something went very wrong, and I’ll be dead within another hour or twelve.” He turned and looked at her. “But something HAS gone very, very wrong,” he said. He started, as if he had just seen something frightening in her face. “You have to leave,” he said. “I can’t take this anymore, and you just make it worse.”   
  
“Make what worse?”  
  
“This dis-integration,” he said. “This loss, this madness.” He moved back across the room again.   
  
“That’s why you want me to go?” Peri asked. Irrational relief flooded through her. So it wasn’t anything SHE had done.  
  
But the Doctor wasn’t listening. He was still muttering to himself. “This isn’t me,” he said. “I’m always different, but it’s always me. I find where I am and I integrate. There are all these different facets to me, different angles which are different windows into the same wondrous jewel.” Peri rolled her eyes at this conceit. “And I’m looking and looking, and I can’t find it, I can’t, I can’t FIND... ME.” He turned to Peri in supplication. “I’ve been scattered and shattered and tattered, and I’m reaching through a thousand wrong turns and keep coming up against me not me!”   
  
Peri wasn’t sure what he wanted, but the perpetual grief she felt for the man she thought she had known was the first thing that came to hand. “You have changed,” Peri said quietly. “I miss you.”   
  
“I’m... here!”   
  
“But it’s not you. Like you said. You were so... angelic before...”   
  
The Doctor froze and glared at her. “Angelic,” he said incredulously. “And now I’m not, I suppose.”   
  
Peri looked away. “I don’t see that, no.”   
  
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “It’s still me,” he said. “All the same things are in here, I’m still in here.”   
  
Peri stared up at him, trying to see something of the gentle angel that had taken her to the stars, and she couldn’t find him anywhere. Not in the rage on his face or the scorn in his eyes or the sheer daunting size of him. “I can’t find you in there,” she said, and her voice quivered.   
  
The Doctor grabbed her. She gasped, her heart surging with terror. “You don’t understand, I’m me!” he hissed at her. “I’m always me! My personality integrates, because it’s always been me.” He looked her over, his hands running down her arms. “Look at yourself, look inside, and you’re made up of different people, you have bits of you that are vain and bits that are playful and bits that are kind and bits that are just angry at the universe, different facets of your personality, and you turn that all around and shake it up, and that’s you!” He stared at her, as if willing her to understand. His eyes were so intense and she couldn’t escape them. “And that’s me,” he said. “I’ve been shaken and shuffled and reshaped until everything’s turned about and other things are on top, but it’s always been me, Peri. There can be nothing here that wasn’t there before. Nothing before that isn’t still here now!”   
  
Peri shook her head, really not understanding. “Then what’s the problem?”   
  
“Because this can’t be me!” the Doctor shouted at her. He realized he was shouting in her face and let go of her. “Look at me! Just look, look at me! I’m shouting at you! Since when do I shout at people? Since when am I violent and irate and irascible and — and — and THIS!” He gestured to himself with a furious flash of his hands. “It’s NEVER been like this before,” he grumbled, returning to his pacing.   
  
Peri was still frightened. Her hands were shaking. But his confession had touched her, somewhere under the fear. Also, he did seem more, for lack of a better term, human without that awful coat on. Whatever he was going through was clearly tough on him. But she’d known that from the start. “Jeez,” she muttered. “It never occurred to me before that you were just as dissatisfied with the way this turned out as I was,” Peri said glumly.   
  
“But that’s just the thing,” the Doctor snarled. “I’m not dissatisfied. I feel so smug and self-satisfied that it makes me positively sick! I feel like a god! I could do absolutely ANYTHING!” He roared at the ceiling like a lion.   
  
Peri cringed, her heart skipping in her chest. “You’re scaring me, Doctor,” she whispered.   
  
He gasped, and his eyes shot to her. “I know,” he breathed. “I want to scare you.” This was the first time he had said anything of the kind, and she blinked. He gazed back at her. “All the time. What kind of a monster have I become that I want to scare you?” He sank down into the chair that held his coat. He shook his head, defeated. “I can’t find myself,” he said. “Nothing fits, nothing is me. Look at me, Peri,” he said. “Just look at me.”   
  
And she did. She realized she never really looked at him anymore. It hurt so much to see him standing where she expected to see the Doctor that she often turned her eyes away. Like a puzzle piece the wrong shape. She looked at him now, not with frustration or disappointment, but just looking. She was surprised by what she saw. She’d been judging him far too harshly. He wasn’t fat and old and coarse, not in and of himself. That was only when she compared him to what he had been, and it wasn’t that he was now ugly, he was just very different. Before the Doctor had been slight and charming and diffident. Now he was passionate and wild and dangerous. And just at this moment he was exhausted and miserable, and Peri had the absurd desire to reach out and pet him.   
  
She was a bit at a loss for words. She got down on her knees and touched his leg, gentle, comforting. “I wouldn’t worry,” she said, not sure she was saying the right thing. “You don’t seem to have any trouble figuring anything out,” Peri said. “I mean, it takes a certain authoritative turn of mind to pick THAT out of all the coats in the wardrobe.”   
  
The Doctor turned sideways to look down at it, and picked up one patchwork sleeve. “This was the only thing I could bear to wear,” he said. He looked down at her. “How horrifying is that?”   
  
“You mean you know that coat’s awful?” Peri asked.   
  
“It fits,” the Doctor said hopelessly. “I can’t help it, everything else was wrong. It’s the only thing that fits, because it isn’t anything. Any color, any style, any fabric, it’s everything and nothing and nothing goes with anything, and it’s... it’s me! And I love it, and I hate it, and it doesn’t make any sense.” He reached over and softly caressed her cheek. It was the most gentle touch he had ever given her — even before. “I don’t make any sense.” His face twisted and she saw tears in his eyes again. His hand closed into a fist and he looked away. “You have to go, Peri.”   
  
“No,” Peri said, and she really meant it. “You need help, Doctor. I can’t leave you when you’re... like this.”   
  
“But I can’t take it,” he said. “I’m screaming inside at myself all the time, and I’ve settled, but I can’t have settled, because how could I settle like this? I nearly hit you this afternoon, can you believe that? Over nothing!” He looked at her. “And look at you! I’m making you angry and frightened and I want... I want...” He stopped before he said anymore, his fists clenched. He stood up and away from her and started pacing again. “It’s never been this hard before,” the Doctor muttered. “When I regenerate it’s all supposed to get so easy!”   
  
“I wouldn’t call any of this easy,” Peri said.   
  
“That’s just the thing,” the Doctor told her. “When a Time Lord regenerates, they draw upon previous experiences, adapt to suit their environment. And that includes people. Any kind of bond, any kind of emotion, if I feel anything all, it influences the regeneration, because emotion always stays the same. Everything always got easier before! It worked with Polly, and Jamie... too bad I regenerated just as we said goodbye. But Sarah Jane, dear Sarah Jane, everything became so, so easy with her.” His face crumpled again, and he turned around, biting his knuckle until whatever he was thinking about started rolling again. “It was all right with Tegan,” he said, starting his frenetic pacing again, “though I think I was actually drawing from Adric and Romana, Adric was young, so young, and Romana always thought I was mad.”   
  
“I don’t blame him,” Peri muttered.   
  
“Her,” the Doctor snapped. “Romana was a woman.” He sighed and his eyes became distant. “Oh, such a woman. Twice. The second time even better.”  
  
“Yeah, snap out of it, Doctor,” Peri said, her sympathy vanishing in an instant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he meant by ‘twice’.   
  
“You should thank her,” the Doctor said bitterly. “It helped create that angelic creature you were oh so fond of.”   
  
Peri blushed, wishing she hadn’t said anything of the kind.   
  
“But it doesn’t seem to have worked this time! Everything’s backwards. It’s all some hellish nightmare of violence and arrogance. And look at you!” the Doctor said. “And look at me! You’re miserable, I’m furious, and I seem to be made of poison! All we do is fight!”   
  
“And who’s fault is that?” Peri lost her temper. His litany of girlfriends or companions or whatever he called them had infuriated her for some reason. She stood up and went right up to him, glaring bloody murder. “If you stopped shouting and showing off all the time, it wouldn’t be so bad!” she barked at him.   
  
“Shouting and showing off is the only thing I can do!” the Doctor yelled back at her. “Believe you me, it’s a lot better than most of the things I want to do!”   
  
“Like what?” Peri challenged him.   
  
The Doctor glared. “Make you LISTEN for once,” he growled, and he grabbed her by the shirt. “I told you to get out, and I meant it,” he said, pressing her against the wall. “I can’t do this. I can’t bear being around you another minute, with the scorn in your voice and the hate in your wretched eyes.”  
  
“I don’t hate you,” Peri whispered.  
  
“I’m no fool Peri, and I know when humans lie to me,” he growled. “The first thing my new ears heard was your voice telling me I was horrible.” His face twitched. “You didn’t even know me yet!”   
  
“I didn’t need to!” Peri gasped, heat flooding through her, of rage, she thought. Her arms went up around him, as if to hit him, or tear him away, but she did neither of these things. “I could tell right away you were atrocious! So arrogant and rude! You’re right! I do hate you! I hate you every minute of every day! You killed someone I... I liked, and... and every time I see you it’s like you’re killing him again.”   
  
“I didn’t kill anybody,” the Doctor growled at her through clenched teeth. She could feel his breath hot on her face. He smelled of cinnamon and honeysuckle and ozone, and his arms were strong on the wall on either side of her. But his next words shocked her. “If anything, you killed me. And you keep on killing me, Peri. Every day. Your contempt and your resentment that I bothered to save your pitiful frailty, until you hate me for keeping you alive! I didn’t do this for fun, you know! It hurts, and I fought it, I fought it as long as I could, and it was like being raked over hot coals, but I did it, because I knew I’d be too unstable to save you if I let myself die! I wasn’t sure I even could regenerate. I thought I’d fought it too long. You would have gotten your wish, then, Peri, and I would have died indeed!”  
  
Peri was stabbed by an unexpected lance of pain at the thought, which was surprising, since wishing he really was dead was something she did for pleasure whenever he was being an ass. But she hadn’t meant it, not in her heart.   
  
“I died to save you, and all you can do is despise me for it!” He pushed at her, grunting in frustration. “What do you expect me to do? Hate myself? It’s not as if I can go back! I don’t even want to! I can’t stand even looking at you anymore, can’t stand the way you look at me! The accusation and the recrimination keep churning round and round until it makes me want to do such things...” He breathed deeply, as if inhaling her. Peri only stood against the wall, trembling, shuddering in the heat of his breath on her face. She was acutely aware of the bulge of his knee between her legs. “I know not yet what they might be,” the Doctor hissed, “but they shall be the terror of the earth!” He snorted in frustration, and it made his whole body move. The tiny movement rocked through her, and she found herself melting beneath his weight until her groin had claimed his thigh. She made a small sound as the sensation overwhelmed her, her eyes closed in her arousal. When she realized what she was doing she tried to pull herself more upright, but she was trembling so hard and her cheeks were so hot.   
  
And the Doctor was staring at her.   
  
His face had changed from the concentrated fury of a moment ago, and she did not know this look. It wasn’t his customary glare. It wasn’t his habitual smirk. This was neither arrogant nor angry nor frightened nor foul. His face was clear, more clear than she had ever seen it before, and his eyes held such a gentle wonder that she was spellbound.   
  
“Peri!” the Doctor breathed, as if he was naming a newborn child.   
  
Peri trembled beneath him, and he tilted his head, considering. He did not pull away. Suddenly his voice was so gentle and so disarming she had no idea what to make of it. “Why haven’t you asked to go home?” the Doctor asked.   
  
Peri had a hard time finding her voice. “Wh-what do you mean?”   
  
“I changed,” he whispered. “I hurt you. I frightened you. I annoyed you beyond sense. I nearly killed you. Why did you not tell me to take you home?”   
  
The truth of the matter was, it had simply never occurred to her. “I... I don’t know,” she said.   
  
The Doctor shook his head. “You don’t, do you.” He shifted his weight slightly, which took her weight off his leg. Suddenly she felt achingly neglected, and she gasped. Then he pressed against her more tightly, and ripples of sensation made her heart tight in her throat. She made a small sound in the back of her throat. “Am I frightening you now?” he asked, his voice heady.   
  
His body was pressed against hers and she was pushed helpless against the wall and he had been shouting at her and threatening her and, “Yes,” Peri whispered.   
  
“You’re not pulling away,” the Doctor pointed out. “I’m not holding you that hard, you could duck beneath my arms, why aren’t you struggling?”   
  
Peri really couldn’t find her voice. Something terribly frightening was going on, but it no longer seemed to be with the Doctor. Some terrible revelation was bleeding through the walls she had carefully constructed in her psyche, and she didn’t want to know what was behind them. “I....” was all she managed.   
  
“Why aren’t you screaming, Peri?” the Doctor whispered. “Why aren’t you clawing my eyes out?” He seemed to be talking to himself, now, his eyes unfocused. “Why are you still here?”   
  
“Stop it.” Peri’s mouth said those words automatically, running from the revelation in her mind.   
  
“You want me to stop,” the Doctor asked flatly.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
The Doctor released her abruptly and turned away from her, leaving her helpless and desolate against the wall. She almost sobbed. She could barely hold herself up. Her senses were inflamed and even standing straight made her whimper with — something.  
  
“Get away from me, Peri,” the Doctor said with his back toward her. “If that’s what you want.”   
  
Peri licked horribly dry lips. “Why?” she asked.   
  
The Doctor still did not look at her. “Last chance,” he said evenly. “After this... unless there’s something wrong with the TARDIS, of course... there will be no stopping me.”  
  
Peri shook her head. “I don’t understand.”   
  
He looked at her then. There was a strange light to his eyes that she had never seen, not in his anger or his bluster. It was fond, and it was very dangerous. “TARDIS,” he said. “The one word that will always stop me. You wouldn’t forget that, would you?” He smiled then, and the words he whispered were as deadly as the hiss of a snake. “I can’t imagine why I didn’t see it before.”   
  
The terrible fear seized her again, and she took a hesitant step back. “See what before?” she asked. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life... and yet... somehow... she was not running out the open door.   
  
He moved toward her slowly, like a cat, hunting. “It was you, Peri,” he said, his voice deep, rumbling... seductive. “From the beginning.... It was always... you.” His hand struck like the pouncing cat, grabbing hold of her hair and yanking her to him.   
  
“Doctor!” Peri shrieked. “Doctor, you’re hurting me!”   
  
“I know,” the Doctor said evenly. “And you’re terrified.”   
  
“So let go!”   
  
“No.”   
  
Peri rolled her eyes at him, trying to catch a glimpse of his face through the pain in her scalp. Tears were stinging her eyes now, and she staggered. He dragged her down and down, her strength no match for his, until she was helpless on the floor, and the Doctor hovered over her, and it was so much like that first day... his hands on her throat... wanting to hurt her... to kill her....   
  
She moaned with unexpected lust at the memory, and her hips writhed beneath him. He shifted, and one hand grabbed firm but gentle hold on her throat. The other reached for her shorts, tearing out the drawstring and jamming his fingers beneath the lose fabric and under her pants. He grabbed hold of her pubic hair for one painful squeeze before his hand found her slit. Roughly, his middle finger doing most of the work, he pushed his hand down across her clit, past it, tickling over her slippery center and back again and again. She cried out, the sound muffled a bit from his hand, which was almost but not quite blocking her breath.   
  
The Doctor’s hands abandoned her — or that’s what it felt like — as he sat up and used both to drag her shorts down around her ankles.   
  
“No!” she cried, the word as automatic as a heartbeat. “No, don’t, please don’t!”   
  
The Doctor’s fingers slipped inside her, two of them, filling her and stretching her, and she could feel his erection as he pressed it against her thigh.   
  
“No. Don’t.”   
  
The Doctor reached up and slapped her, very gently, across the face. It stung, a little, and made a quiet sound, but the feeling of it made her tense all over. She tensed around the Doctor’s fingers, and she gasped, staring at the white ceiling of her room in the TARDIS. The Doctor had gone mad. Fully and completely mad. And she was as mad as he was because she wasn’t, as he had said, trying to claw his eyes out. Terror clutched her again. “Please, don’t,” she gasped, trying to catch his gaze. “Doctor. I can’t stand it!”   
  
He blinked down at her. “What was the word?” he said.   
  
Peri couldn’t think.   
  
“The word, Peri, what was it?”   
  
She couldn’t think of what he meant, unless it was the nonsense he was babbling a minute ago. “T-TARDIS?”   
  
With an alacrity that was jarring, the Doctor let her go. Peri found herself on the floor, half naked, trembling, horrified... and very very alone. She had never felt more bereft in her life. The comforting, forcing weight was gone, the body which was telling her, in no uncertain terms, you don’t have to like it, you don’t have to accept it, you don’t have to admit to it, I’m going to make you feel good whether you want it or not. Her Doctor was gone.   
  
Peri sat there, shaking, horrified with herself. What was she that she felt so horrible now that it was over? What kind of a sick, twisted mind wanted to be dragged to the floor, tormented and raped?   
  
Except... if he could be trusted... if she held the power to stop him... it wasn’t rape, then, was it.   
  
She didn’t want to admit it. She didn’t want to think about herself like that. She didn’t want to be the twisted bitch who wanted to be forced, wanted to be hurt, wanted someone to dominate her like this. Her background was sick enough as it was, her childhood, her step-father. She didn’t want to think that it had broken her, left her twisted and molded to... this. In fact, she could barely admit she ever wanted anyone to touch her at all. But the Doctor’s words of a few minutes ago haunted her. “It was you, Peri.” And then, “It’s all supposed to be so easy,” and “I adapt to suit my environment.”  
  
Could it be true? Could she have done this to him? And if she had... what had she turned him into? She had fallen in love, too quickly, really, with a brilliant angel from another world. He had died saving her life, and become this.... How could she, whom he barely knew, have changed him? Unless he, too, had fallen much too quickly. Any emotion, he had said, any kind of bond. She looked up at the Doctor.  
  
He was standing by the wall, his hands at his sides, his eyes raking at her body. He wasn’t as traditionally handsome has he had been, but there was something powerful and radiant about him. He stood perfectly, harmlessly still. She stared at him. He was so different. Stronger. Older. Much more sure of himself. The kind of man who was ready and willing and even eager to... do this.   
  
And as she thought about it, she could not for the life of her imagine that other Doctor pressing her body to the wall, or dragging her pants around her ankles as she moaned, protesting, or his gentle hands holding her throat, forcing her down and down and down.... She wasn’t sure she could even imagine him kissing her. He would probably have danced around this kind of thing for decades, waiting for her to make an obvious move. But obvious moves made her cringe. Admitting what she wanted made her feel dirty. The only thing she could do was show her receptiveness in her clothing, maybe a smile. And the Doctor hadn’t seemed at all ready to accept these subtle signs and make any kind of offer.   
  
But this Doctor... he was all the things she could never admit she wanted. She even accepted, for one brief flicker of self-realization, that she even liked fighting with him. It was exhilarating to fight and know she could trust him, even so.   
  
Everything that is here, was there before. Everything that was there, is still here, somewhere. His confusion was past, the odd desires that he could barely control were explained now, and his expression held a mischievous, hungry serenity. She could almost find the angel in his eyes.   
  
With a pain as fierce as a blade, she realized — she loved him more than ever. She had since the first day. She loved his theatrics and his arrogance and how he tried to needle her. She loved his pain. She loved his passion. She loved hating him. He had changed to suit her every buried, unspoken desire, and being faced with that hurt.  
  
She almost wasn’t worthy of it.   
  
“Doctor?” she said quietly.   
  
He stood very still and stared at her. “Yes?”   
  
Her voice was very small, but she managed to say it. It was the only time, and the only way, she could ever acknowledge that she wanted him back. “I was mistaken. There’s nothing wrong with the TARDIS.”   
  
The Doctor grinned at her, his teeth flashing in his full, sweet face. “I thought there wasn’t,” he said. He strode back to her, grabbed her by her shirt, and made her look at him as he sank to down to the floor with her. Then, with surprising gentleness, he wrapped his arms around her. For long minutes they knelt there, perfectly still, wrapped around each other, just breathing each other in. “I should have known it was you all along,” he whispered in her ear. Then his mouth caressed her cheek, traveling down her jaw until he found her mouth, and when he found it he bit her lip almost too hard before forcing her mouth open and insinuating himself inside.   
  
But he was already inside her. Just as she was already deep of inside him.   
  
  



	2. What

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, now we're getting a little less plot and a lot more self indulgence and sex.

The kiss was electrifying, sending shocks all through her body. Her hands clutched at him, digging into his shoulders as if she meant to bruise him. Her nails raked at the back of his neck. With a sudden gasp he pulled away, snatching again at her hair. “Stop that, you vixen!” he snarled.

“Ah!” Peri could only gasp as the pain registered through her body.

He slowly released her hair and took hold of her blouse. “Take this off,” he told her.

“No,” Peri breathed.

He grinned wickedly as he repeated, “No? No? NO? Really?”

Peri looked up at him, daring him with her eyes.

“Oh, we’ll see about this!” he laughed. Within a moment he had her against the wall, his body pressed against her back. “You dare to disobey me, child?” he snarled.

She groaned. She could feel him full against her as he pressed her into the wall. Her hands found purchase on two of the circular discs as he hissed into her ear. “I’ll teach you better than that.” He unhooked the single button at the back of her neck and then his hands traced up her bare buttocks, tickling over her back until the blouse was lifted. He lifted it over her head and turned her, and with a deft twist he captured her arms in the tightly woven silk. Her hands were bound together, and she couldn’t move.

With one hand still keeping her silken bonds secure, the Doctor used his other to caress the soft flesh that was not concealed by her bra. His touch made her shiver, and his fingers slipped under the lacy fabric, tenderly pinching her nipple. Peri moaned again, and her hips shifted, reaching for him. “Stop...” she whispered. “Please. Please stop.”

“I don’t have to,” the Doctor told her. He lifted his knee and pressed it against her groin. She moaned and ground against him, and the Doctor made a small sound of contentment. He bent and claimed her nipple, his tongue caressing her flesh through the fabric of her bra. It felt wonderful, but to do it he had abandoned her groin. Anger flooded through her. She tried to shove him away with her bound hands, but it was ineffectual at best. The Doctor held her firmly by the arms and dragged her with him, forcing her onto the bed. His weight pressed down on top of her, the patterns of his waistcoat tickling against her skin.

“No!” Peri shouted. She couldn’t stop saying it.

Fortunately, the Doctor didn’t seem to mind hearing it. He lifted her arms and hooked the blouse that bound her over the corner of her headboard. There was no escape. She was stuck like a Chinese finger trap, the more she pulled the tighter she was caught. The Doctor had both hands free, now, and he intended to use them. He took hold of the lace on her bra and tugged, ripping the lace on one cup completely off. Her breast was exposed, and he nuzzled the tender flesh.

“Oh, God!” Peri breathed.

Deftly, he tore off the other cup, and used both hands to massage her breasts, kneading them like a cat. “Oh, you bastard!” Peri moaned as the sensation passed through her, twinging into her groin, making her even wetter than she had been. She groaned, biting her lip to keep from crying out. He was still completely clothed, and it made her feel very vulnerable, that difference between them.

There were so many differences between them.

The Doctor reached over and bit her throat, gently pinching at her artery. She held very still as terror speeded her heart rate. She wished she could hold her breath, but she was so heated that she was actually panting. The Doctor opened his teeth, licking at her skin with a hot, wet tongue, sending shivers down her flesh. “Do you want me to stop?” he whispered in her ear.

“No,” she muttered, her automatic protest taking over before she even knew what she was saying.

The Doctor chuckled, a deep, throaty sound, and placed his hand over her mouth. “You inconsistent little fool,” he breathed. With one hand he reached down, unfastening his trousers.

At the first feel of his cock on her stomach, panic struck her. Her reaction surprised her. Memories of her stepfather were nipping at the corners of her consciousness, and she was fighting them off as sure as she began to fight the Doctor. She could not help herself. She screamed, muffled by his hand, and started to kick and writhe, pulling against her silken bonds, trying to throw him off her. And he lay there on top of her, still and unmovable as a mountain, and every thrust of her terrified body made his cock twitch against her. Slowly, almost like a caress, the Doctor lifted his hand. His hand traveled down to her throat, but he did not squeeze. Not this time. “Don’t!” Peri cried. “Don’t, you can’t! I can’t! Please, please don’t!”

He watched her for a long moment, considering her pleas. “How are you going to stop me?” he finally asked.

Peri sobbed, and she wasn’t sure it was with terror or relief. There was a part of her that was constantly scared that he was actually going to listen, that he was suddenly going to realize he was being totally evil, fall on the floor and beg her forgiveness. She was afraid he really was going to stop. She didn’t want to want this. She didn’t want to have to admit to her sexuality. She always panicked whenever anyone touched her sexually, she couldn’t help it, and she couldn’t help but love it, too. Her stepfather had wounded her in ways she never even wanted to consider. She needed this to go on. Every moment that he forced himself on her, while she held that quiet key in the back of her mind, was healing something inside her. Ultimately, she was the one in control of this, but she didn’t have to think about what she wanted him to do. “I can’t,” she breathed instead. “I can’t stop you, just please... please!”

The Doctor grabbed for her mouth again, forcing her pleas into silence. “Hold very still, Peri,” he whispered. “Just for a moment.” He kissed her neck right behind her ear, and he shifted. She felt his cock between her legs, just tickling at her slippery folds.

“Mm!” Peri hummed as the hard, smooth shaft teased her clitoris, and her legs opened of their own accord. ‘Inside me,’ Peri thought. ‘He’s going to be inside me, he’s going to claim me, I don’t think I can bear it!’ As he shifted over her, almost entering her and then sliding back up, Peri shuddered.

“Please, Peri,” the Doctor whispered. “Very, very still.”

Peri opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was regarding her with his clear, soulful eyes, and he seemed worried about something. He read the question in her eyes. “This is always the hardest part for me,” he told her gently. “I don’t want to forget myself.” He leaned forward, his cock just hovering at the door way to her deepest secrets. The effort not to thrust against him made her tremble. “This is the first time I’ve done this in this body, you know,” he whispered in her ear. “And things have been awfully intense. I don’t want to hurt you.” Then he grinned, wickedly. “Much.”

She wished he hadn’t said that. The confession made lightning bolts of desire race up her stomach, and it was all she could do to keep from wrapping her legs around him and dragging him inside her.

Very deliberately, the Doctor slid inside her, filling her, filling her, filling her until it almost hurt, and she moaned with the effort of keeping still. This was the worst thing he had done to her yet! She didn’t want to have to control herself. The whole point of this was to keep things feeling out of her control. To her surprise, the Doctor did not start to thrust. His entire body tensed above her, turning him rigid as granite, and he grunted, and was.... trembling. Despite her efforts the vibration was too much for her inflamed senses, and her hips shifted, forcing her clit up against him.

The Doctor yelled, almost in her ear, muffling his voice in the pillow. “Oh —!” The word he used next wasn’t even fully a word. Clearly there was no translation for it in English. As well as an incomprehensible sound, it was a psychic buffet that nearly knocked her out, blasting through her mind like a neutron bomb. For a few minutes everything was silent and grey. Then, her ears ringing as if from a blow, Peri’s vision slowly returned.

It took her a minute to find her voice. “Whhat... was that?” she gasped.

“Sorry,” the Doctor breathed above her. “I told you to keep still, you wretched girl.”

“But what happened?”

He looked at her as if she were an idiot. “I’m a Time Lord. We aren’t the same species or even from the same planet. It’s remarkable we’re sexually compatible at all, you starving little minx. I needed to get past a certain... reaction to the instigation of intercourse, and you... interrupted my meditation with your carnal desires.” For all his words were annoyed, he was actually looking at her quite fondly. “You should listen to me when I tell you something, you stupid girl. It takes a much more mentally exceptional human than you to absorb an attempt at a mind link without reaction; if I hadn’t been paying attention I could well have killed you.”

“Go to hell,” Peri groaned. Her head ached.

The Doctor’s voice turned gentle. “Don’t worry, I can hold it back,” he whispered. “It was just an initial instinct.” The Doctor kissed her temples, first one, and then the other, slowly, gently. A gentle heat warmed her skin, and seemed to spread down her entire body. Her headache started to fade. She opened her eyes. He looked down at her, grinning, his tongue touching his teeth. “Your skills lie in other areas,” he whispered seductively. He thrust deep inside her, pressing his length inside until she could feel the tip of it grating on her, almost bruising her.

“Oh, God!” She pulled on the silk that still bound her hands, wanting to hold him, wanting to scratch him, wanting to crush him to her.

He looked down at her, his full lips parted in a grin. “Now the fun starts,” he laughed.


	3. When

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I admit it, by now the plot has gone on a lovely vacation somewhere sunny, and probably won't be back until chapters four or five. But for now we get to have a lot of fun.

Peri looked up at him. His self-satisfied smirk was exceedingly annoying, and he was still pretty much fully clothed. “You bastard!”

He tilted his head, taken aback. “Who, me?”

Peri shifted. “Your watch chain is digging into my hip,” she complained.

He frowned and then sat up, leaving her uncomfortably exposed. “Ooh!” he said. “Ideas.” He helped her to sit up and unhooked her blouse from the head of the bed. She sighed with relief — her arms had been getting sore.

“What are you—?” but that became obvious as he released her hands and then pulled her back down onto the bed with him, holding her head and kissing her soundly. She’d never been kissed like this. Methodically and sensuously, tenderly but with a distinct edge of teeth that kept her kissing him back, again and again and again, every time she even thought about pulling away. Even without his forcing her she still felt forced, like an addict is forced by their own addiction to take more and more and more.

The Doctor’s hands unhooked the remains of her bra, and she barely registered his moving her arms to take it off her. Her hands, free and unbound, grabbed hold of his hair, pulling on it as if she were trying to pull him off her, but he wasn’t moving, and she wasn’t fighting that hard. And they were still kissing.

The Doctor grabbed one of her hands and held it against his chest, pushing it under his shirt and waistcoat, holding her against his skin. He certainly felt human. He had hair like a man and muscles like a man and when she found his nipple and squeezed it he grunted like a man. He rolled onto his back, pulling her atop of him, and took hold of her waist. He wasn’t forcing her now, but he was guiding her, and she was straddled over him. His cock touched her, and it felt so good she moaned and wanted him back, back inside.

But he wasn’t holding her now. She was on top, and that meant she...

With a thin sound of horror Peri surged backwards, falling off the bed onto the floor. She skittered backwards on her hands until she ran into the chair, staring at him in terror and disgust.

The Doctor sat up, his shirt and waistcoat unbuttoned — and when had she done that? She couldn’t recall — staring at her, his eyes narrowed. Peri gasped on the floor, trembling, frightened, but she wasn’t sure of what. At the same moment they both remembered the open door.

Peri made a lunge on her hands and knees, and the Doctor made a leap. She got there first, but he wasn’t far after, and he grabbed her by the ankle. “No!” she shouted.

The Doctor only chuckled, pulling her back into the room with him. “You want to run, Peri?” the Doctor said, gathering her back into his arms. “No. You want to fly. Fly far, far away.” He grinned. “Little songbird.” He reached out and slammed the door shut. “I’m the one who can set you free,” he said.

God, he felt so strong against her! Her head sank onto his bare chest. He petted her head gently, and then reached around, taking off his shirt, slipping both braces down around his hips. Then he stood, sliding off his trousers, and Peri found herself presented with his cock.

“Take this,” the Doctor said. He lifted her to her knees, pressing his cock to her mouth.

It was still damp from her own juices, and she opened her mouth hesitantly. She tasted slightly acidic, and she recognized that. But he was very OTHER. She was awash again in that honeysuckle and ozone scent— or that wasn’t exactly it, but it was very much not human. As she licked the tip of his cock — which certainly looked human enough — a very small amount of liquid rolled onto her tongue, a taste of lavender and battery acid that could almost have hurt her mouth, but didn’t.

The Doctor hummed contentedly as he looked down at her, his knees bending slightly to find more of her. She tongued the cleft at the bottom of his cock, thinking he would appreciate it if he was anything like a human. He seemed to. “Take me in,” he said quietly.

Peri opened her mouth a little wider and licked half his shaft.

“I said, take me IN,” the Doctor growled, and he shoved at her throat, forcing himself against her.

She gagged, horrified, out of control, unable to breathe. She couldn’t speak! Then she realized she was not against the wall, he was not holding her head very hard, and she had every ability to pull away. She did, coughing and gasping, shoving him away, but the Doctor caught her head. “No,” she whispered. “God, no, not again!” If he tried again she’d have to stop him, before her voice was blocked. This could kill her!

Very gently but very firmly the Doctor held her head. “Open your mouth, Peri,” he said. He didn’t seem angry that she had pulled away. She grunted a protest and tried to pull her head away again. “It’s all right,” he suddenly whispered, in that same disarming, gentle tone he had used when he had her against the wall. “Open your mouth.”

And she almost wanted to. He did not force her this time, but he held her, stroking her hair... again she welcomed his hard length, drawing him into her mouth.

“Now, take a deep breath,” he said. “And again.” She inhaled deeply through her nose, finding herself in the tangle of hair above the shaft she was holding. “Now don’t fight it, try to swallow me.” She froze, unwilling to try. He pushed himself forward and Peri panicked, gagging again as she tried to pull away.

“Peri,” the Doctor purred, though he didn’t try to hold her. “Do what I tell you.”

The voice was so gentle, she could hardly find a reason to protest. Then the strangest words drifted down to her. “I won’t hurt you, Peri.”

He’d said that before, in the corridors of the TARDIS, just a few days after his regeneration. Through her fear, she remembered she could stop this, if she wanted to. The thought did not negate her fear, but it did leave her in control of it. As the terror tickled her mind with a thousand tiny bubbles, she opened her mouth wider and tried to swallow him.

It was not easy. She had no idea how she did it. One second she was closed and gagging on him, and the next she had opened, swallowing him like a large gulp of water, and he was halfway down her throat, and she could FEEL him, and he felt like the largest and most impressive thing in the universe, and her nose was buried in his hair and he smelled heady and amazing and she couldn’t believe she was doing this.

“Try to breathe with me,” the Doctor said, his voice dusky with pleasure, and he thrust his hips against her face.

Peri sucked in breath through her nose, and it was fantastic having him fill her like this, as if he was actually becoming her, but she knew she couldn’t keep this up for long. She was trembling and her vision was going grey. Their rhythm synchronized and for a few blissful pulses, Peri forgot who she was. She was simply this feeling, this moving, pulsing organ, just an extension of the Doctor, and oh, God, how she loved him! There was no time. No past. Just this, this filling, pulsing, encompassing NOW.

He pulled away before the roaring in her ears got too loud. She knelt gasping on the floor at his feet, trying to find herself in her body again. She had no idea where she was. But then the Doctor was on the floor with her, and his arms were around her, and he scooped her up and lay her on the bed and kissed her throat as if it was the holy grail.

She opened her eyes to see his curly head as his lips traveled down to her collarbone. She lifted her hand and touched his hair. Languidly, he turned his eyes to hers. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to thank me,” Peri whispered. “I thought I was supposed to do whatever you said, and if I didn’t, you’d make me.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You seem to have utterly misunderstood the nature of this relationship, Peri,” he said haughtily. “I am a Time Lord, and I have the right and ability, nay, the pleasure of doing whatever I want.” He crept forward and said quietly into her mouth, his lips tickling hers, “And if that includes thanking you for learning something new, I’ll do it.”

“Who said it was something new?” Peri said in a painful whisper.

The Doctor leaned back. “If it wasn’t, then whoever did it before was just torturing you,” he said. “Because you had no idea how.”

Peri said nothing.

Quiet, unflinching understanding passed slowly over the Doctor’s face. “That explains that, then,” he said quietly. With soft movement he reached up and kissed her, like sipping a rare vintage. “Peri,” he whispered. “My Peri.”

She thought, for one blissful second, that he was going to say he loved her. She waited to hear it, longed to hear it. But the words didn’t come. What came instead was his body, heavy and strong and determined, creeping over her as inexorably as the dawn. It was so gentle, yet so unyielding, and she opened to it like a flower to the sun. He entered her easily, gently, pulsing with the same rhythm as the TARDIS engines, slow, heady, hypnotic.

It felt so good.

She’d never had it this gently, never felt someone who actually seemed to care. She started to feel it building in her, really building. She had never come with someone inside her before, never really enjoyed the actual feeling of someone fucking her. Her body had never been hers.

And it wasn’t hers, now. It was the Doctor’s. But his goal did not seem to be ejaculation. The movements were different, the shift of his body was directed, not at pleasuring himself but at her. He ground against her using his pelvis as much as his cock, and she clutched at him.

She didn’t want to come. Not with him in her, that was the ultimate surrender, the final claim. It was the one thing she had managed to keep for herself through all her stepfather’s torment, that his cock had never managed to please her body. She didn’t want it now. As the orgasm began to crest inside her, she tried to fight him off. “Stop,” she moaned. “Stop!”

And to her horror, the Doctor listened, rolled off her, flipped to the side of the bed, leaving her naked and exposed, the cool air whistling cruelly over her sweating body.

Peri half sobbed with unspent desire, writhing with dissatisfaction. He wasn’t going to make her admit it, was he? He wasn’t going to make her beg...? She turned to look at him, and he had such a smug grin on his face that she knew he knew exactly what he was doing.

“You bastard!” she barked, and she hit him, hard, in the chest.

He sat half up, his eyes sparking.

“Bastard!” Peri shouted again, and she slapped his face. She hit him again and again, almost forcing him off the bed, but he grabbed her wrists and wrestled her off him, laughing at her. That made her even angrier than before, and she screamed in frustration, lashing out at him as if she would tear his face off. “I’ll show you, you self-centered egotistical pig!”

But he was far too strong, and she could barely get her hands free to implant a few impotent blows. She thought in the struggle that the Doctor might have even hit her back a few times, but it was so gentle and she was so angry she couldn’t tell the difference between his blows and the ones she accidently landed on herself as she struggled. The pain was mild, but pervasive, making her entire body tingle with it. She screeched and struck, and he struggled against her, finally pushing her back onto the bed, where he entered her with the force of a blow.

She reacted as if it really were a blow, grunting with the force of it, and his hands grabbed her wrists and held her down, keeping her from moving hardly at all. This was rape, pure and simple, and she tried to close her legs and push him off her, but there was no stopping this creature that was above her, inside her, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting, until her orgasm threatened again, and she started to push up, hungry for it, whimpering, almost weeping.

But it didn’t come. With a shock as great as being hit with a bucket of cold water, the Doctor rolled off her again, leaving her just as anxious and dissatisfied as before.

“Oh, God!” Peri moaned, and her hips thrust into the air, desperately searching for the friction she’d been experiencing just a moment ago.

“Yes?” The Doctor said then, and he sat up, towering over her. He smirked.

“Shut up, you!” Peri breathed.

“I thought I told you about talking back to me,” the Doctor said. His head dipped down, and he gently lapped her swollen clit. Exactly once. Then he sat back up and regarded her.

Peri grunted in frustration. “Don’t do that,” she gasped.

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t?”

“Mm.” Peri’s hips were already thrusting forward.

The Doctor glanced down at her groin, just a flicker of his eyes. She had no idea how only a look could feel as arousing as a touch, but it did. He did it again, and she shivered as the feel of that mischievous look tickled her. His smirk broadened, and he bent down one more time to lap at her clit. She forced herself against his face as he pulled away again. “Stop it!” Peri cried.

“Stop?” he said. “Wasn’t that what got us into this in the first place?”

“Oh, go to hell!” She reached up and pushed his face away, but he grabbed at her wrists and held her.

“Remember what I said a moment ago about ideas?” he said with a grin. He leaned down and grabbed his waistcoat from off the floor. Holding both her hands with one of his, he pulled out his green watch chain and snapped it round her wrists. The clasp which was supposed to hold the watch — and which never had, because he didn’t actually carry a watch, he just thought the watch chain looked cool — was now holding the other end of the chain, and her hands were as effectively bound as if he had put her in handcuffs. She tugged against the chain, but the deceptively thin green metal held.

“That won’t do any good,” the Doctor said. “That’s Damaskian Titanium from Damaskon VI.” He pushed her back down onto the bed and regarded her slippery groin. “Now,” he said, addressing it rather than Peri’s face. “Where were we?”


	4. Where

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot makes a brief appearance at the very end of this chapter.

  
He was very deft with his tongue. Within a few moments he had her writhing and moaning, unable to keep her hips still. Tantalizingly, torturously, he kept one finger just tracing the entrance, but he would not enter her. It was terrible, expecting to feel that fullness inside and receiving nothing, nothing, nothing as he licked and tickled her, sending waves of pleasure coursing through her, but not that one. Not that.   
  
She couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t beg, though God, how she wanted to, every thought in her head was just begging him, begging him to fill her. Eventually she became so hungry for him that she cuffed him, hard, with her bound hands, just to tick him off. It worked. Sputtering, the Doctor surged up. “Quit that!” he said. “I could have bitten you!”   
  
“You dare!” Peri groaned.   
  
The Doctor dared. He dove for her throat, biting at her flesh carnivorously. The furious kiss traveled up her chin and onto her mouth. His face was wet from pleasuring her, and he tasted warm and dangerous. Her legs folded around him without her even deciding to do it, and pulled him inside.   
  
The Doctor groaned. “You asked for it,” he muttered, and he began to thrust.   
  
Peri screamed, pushing him away even as her legs held him tightly. It felt too good, she wasn’t allowed to feel this good! The Doctor put his hand back over her mouth. “Shut up and take it!” he growled.   
  
She had no choice. He pounded into her, harder and harder, drawing her into another orgasm, forcing her into this surrender. She could have bitten his hand, she could have tried to pull him off despite her wrists being bound, she could have twisted her head away and shouted — or even stopped him. But she did none of this. Instead, she started to cry.   
  
She couldn’t help it. She was so filled with emotion, love and hate, disgust and pleasure, acceptance, fear.... As the orgasm flashed through her, Peri saw his face through a haze of tears. Then she saw nothing, as he bent down and kissed her eyelids, changing the rhythm and speed of his thrusts until they were less intrusive.   
  
“You all right?” he whispered.   
  
It sounded like a completely different man from the one who blustered and pontificated and forced himself into her. Peri nodded, but she couldn’t stop crying. And she realized now she was crying in relief. Sheer relief. He’d drawn this out so hard and for so long that it no longer felt at all the same as what had happened to her in that other, half-life she’d suffered through on earth. It wasn’t surrender. It was a victory.   
  
But the Doctor looked worried. “You remember—” he began, but Peri lifted her hands and put them over his mouth. She remembered. She didn’t need to be reminded.   
  
The Doctor regarded her hands and then reached up to unbind her. “Put your arms around me,” he said. She didn’t even need to be told. She wrapped her arms around his back, feeling the muscles cording under her fingertips as he thrust.   
  
He didn’t stop. Not after the second orgasm. Or the third. She had stopped crying long before, but she was beginning to think she might start again if this kept on. She didn’t want to stop him, but... when was it going to end?   
  
Finally she could take it no longer. “No more,” she whispered.   
  
“More,” the Doctor insisted quietly.   
  
Peri looked up at him. “God, don’t you EVER come?”   
  
“No,” the Doctor said. “Or rather I did. Or rather I never stopped.”  
  
“You did?”  
  
“Yes, I nearly knocked you out,” the Doctor said. “You didn’t notice? That’s how my body works. Time Lord, remember?” As if ever let her forget. “Now I just need to finish.”   
  
Peri grunted as his constant pulse twinged against her again. She felt positively bruised, and the pleasure wasn’t pleasurable anymore. “And how long does that take?”   
  
The Doctor grinned wickedly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t keep you for the next twelve hours.”   
  
“What?”   
  
He leaned forward again and kissed her throat. “Don’t worry, so,” he breathed. “Peri, my Peri, you’re human. I can fill you,” he kissed her briefly, “and make you come and come and come, and I feel your heart beat and I hear you scream and whimper and cry out for me, and you are so human. Positively addictive. I’m satisfied so much faster.”  
  
Peri pushed him away. “I’m not your first human, am I?” she accused.   
  
To her relief, the Doctor pulled away and perched by her feet, leaving her empty. “And hopefully won’t be the last, Peri,” he said with ire. “Unless you really will be the death of me. I am hundreds of your years old. I’m well approaching a millennia! Did you really think I remained celibate during all this time?”   
  
“I guess not,” Peri muttered. But she felt very dismal.   
  
He lay down beside her and rubbed himself against her hip as he whispered in her ear, “There haven’t been that many. Most humans even in your day and age collect a far larger number of conquests. By human standards in the fifty-first century, I’m positively a monk.”   
  
The idea of him in a tonsure and habit made her giggle, and he smiled. He reached down between her legs, and she groaned. “I can’t, Doctor,” Peri breathed. “I can’t. I just can’t....”  
  
“You know how to stop me,” the Doctor muttered, still rubbing against her.   
  
“I know, but... but... oh...” She half sobbed.   
  
“Don’t make me stop, Peri,” the Doctor whispered in her ear. “Please. I’ve barely begun.”   
  
The idea was tantalizing and horrific in one. Peri realized that interspecies relationships were fraught with difficulties. “But I can’t,” Peri whispered back.   
  
The Doctor pulled away and took her shoulders, rolling her onto her stomach. “How’s this,” he said from behind her, and pushed himself inside.   
  
“Mm...” He was no longer pushing against her ravaged clit, and he was so gentle it no longer felt like bruising.   
  
“Can you handle that?”   
  
“It’s terrible, Doctor,” she whispered contentedly, “I wish you’d drop dead.”   
  
She could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “I’ll take that as a yes.” He kissed her shoulder and said, “I won’t be offended if you fall asleep, human women often do.”   
  
“Mm...” Peri muttered. She wasn’t sure if she fell asleep or not, but the room grew dim — the TARDIS was apparently paying attention to proceedings and making things easier, a fact she was not entirely comfortable with, but one she had no choice over. The rhythm felt meditative, and she no longer seemed in possession of her body. It wasn’t that someone had stolen it from her — it was like she didn’t need it, and had sloughed it off, like a coat on a hot day.   
  
Some time later, she came back to herself, and she wasn’t sure why. Not at first. She could hear something inside, something that wasn’t herself. It started as just a hum, a drone that she ignored, like the TARDIS engines. Then it was whispers, just trickles of thought she could almost catch. Then she thought she’d caught her name — just a whisper in her mind, barely a tickle. ‘Peri.’ Then again, ‘Peri.’   
  
She opened her eyes. The Doctor was still behind her, still filling her, pulsing so slowly that he seemed to be in slow motion. ‘Peri.’   
  
There was so much more than just that word, though, and she couldn’t catch it. It was something unfathomable, reaching through her, tangling into her thoughts until she wasn’t herself anymore. She thought about saying something, and then without warning, she was incapable of thinking about anything at all. The sound got louder and louder, only it wasn’t really a sound, more like a rushing stream, and it grew stronger, and it threatened to carry her away, leave her a sodden wisp flowing down a raging river, and she couldn’t even remember her own name. There was passion and anger and loneliness beyond her wildest dreams and a pervasive dissatisfaction and loss and loss and loss, and in the middle of this deluge was a thin current of joy, joy, joy, almost manic and so, so beautiful, and alongside energy and danger and new adventures her name was laced inside the joy. Her head was about to explode!   
  
She must have cried out, or even blacked out, because the next thing she knew the Doctor was holding her, had pulled her into his lap and was rocking her, back and forth. “Peri, Peri, come back,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re Peri. My Peri. Come back to me.”  
  
It took her a long time to understand what he was saying, and even longer to understand why he was saying it. She blinked and shook the roaring from her ears. “Were you trying to mind link again?” Peri complained once she could find herself.  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor said. “I’m sorry. It’s instinct, a bit difficult to hold back. You were so relaxed, I wasn’t paying attention. Usually... well, usually there are more internal blocks on someone’s mind. They stop me before they’re even aware. You just let it all wash you away.” He looked down at her. “You really don’t want to be, do you.”   
  
Peri closed her eyes. “I want to fly,” Peri said. “All my life. I wanted to fly, far, far away.” She remembered he had said those words to her earlier, and she wondered how he could know her so well.   
  
Even without his saying it she could already hear what he’d say. ‘I’m a Time Lord! I’m fantastic. Exceptionally gifted, exceedingly perceptive, in short, I’m terrific!’ She chuckled.   
  
He really was terrific. He was quashing his instincts in making love to her, and it probably made things difficult for him. “I’m sorry this isn’t enough for you,” she whispered.  
  
“It is,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t enjoying myself.”   
  
“But you’re reaching out for something I can’t give. And I’m sorry.”   
  
“No, you’re not,” the Doctor said. “You hate me, remember?”   
  
“I love hating you,” she admitted.   
  
The Doctor looked down at her. “I’ll give you something to hate,” he said with a gentle darkness, and he reached between her legs, moistening his fingers in her slippery folds. Peri groaned, still sore, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. He turned her away from him and dragged his fingers up her ass, moistening her anus, spreading it with his fingers.  
  
The familiar terror laced through her again, making her shudder. “No,” she whispered. She didn’t even try to struggle this time. She curled in on herself, her backside in the air, and whispered to herself. “Oh, God, no, not this.”   
  
The Doctor was against her now, moistening his cock against her, and then he shifted and pushed himself against the tight little hole, and Peri clenched herself tightly and considered stopping him.   
  
She had no doubt that she could stop him. No doubt at all. And this thing he was about to do terrified her more than anything, enough that she actually wanted to stop him. And yet... and yet....   
  
She bit her lip and said nothing. The Doctor waited, giving her a chance to change her mind, but she couldn’t, one way or another. She couldn’t invite him in and she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. The Doctor’s fingers touched her again, softening her, spreading her, working himself inside a little at a time, until she felt herself give, and the head of his cock was inside her, fully, and it hurt, and she was so scared. Her eyes opened and her mouth opened in a little O, and she gasped. “Relax,” the Doctor whispered, and she found herself obeying. He pushed himself a little deeper, gently, deliberately. “Oh, you’re tight! Mm!” he groaned. He felt so strange, and he filled her so deeply.   
  
She didn’t even know when he started to thrust. She was so full it barely registered as anything different, but there he was, deep, deep inside her, spreading her soul open, reaching into her. It was like being torn from the inside out by the blissful force of a loving god. “I love you,” she breathed, the words dragged from her like a blade from a wound. “Oh, God, I love you, Doctor.”   
  
The Doctor kissed the back of her neck and let his hands trace gently along her throat. “Peri,” he whispered back. “My Peri.”   
  
“Tell me you love me, Doctor,” she begged. She didn’t know where the words had come from, they were just there, in her mouth, falling from her like a handful of blood red rubies.   
  
The Doctor made a sound behind her, a sound disappointed and torn.   
“Please!” she breathed. “Lie to me. I need to hear it. I don’t care if it’s a lie, I just need to hear the words!”   
  
The was silence from behind her.   
  
“Just say it!” she sobbed.   
  
“Perpugillium Brown, I love you,” the Doctor whispered in her ear. “I can say anything you need me to say. But it doesn’t mean anything.”   
  
Pain clutched at her heart. She knew he was too arrogant, too self-important to love anything but himself. But did he have to TELL her it was a lie?  
  
But he wasn’t finished talking, yet. He kept up his steady pulse inside her as he continued, “Your skin is made of creme porcelain, with lips a seductive red bloom calling me into a world of joy. When you move, the air laughs. You’ve the heart of a saint, an apotheosis of kindness, forgiving of anyone, even me, in my worst moments of arrogance and cruelty. There are even sparks of intelligence, stars of brilliance that peep out and surprise me like wood nymphs. Your touch is a pleasure so hot it feels like pain. And the depth of your soul... the pain in your eyes can cut through the worst memory, the deepest loneliness, leaving me strong and powerful, like I could do anything for you, all I’d need to do to protect you, even break the laws of the universe itself. Your beauty would shame the Triskedellion Suns of the galaxy of Finialgrad. People have been known to kill themselves upon seeing such beauty, for the horror of never seeing its like again. You terrify me. I would die for you. I have died for you. I would do it again. There are beings in this universe that stand out, their colors are brighter, their eyes are deeper, and you are one of these. My Peri, my companion, the one person in the whole of time and space I want with me. Right here, right now, you are mine, and that means you have me completely. You can wrap me around you like a silk scarf, draw me in like the vortex itself.” He bit her ear gently before he added, “And if you think all these truths and a thousand more can be encompassed by the tiny human word ‘love’, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”   
  
Peri lay stunned. What he had just said was beyond comprehension. It had never occurred to her that this was how he saw her, how he felt about her.   
  
Something changed. She didn’t know what it was, but there was something very different inside her. Some wound she hadn’t known was bleeding had quietly and unobtrusively closed.   
  
She knew what she wanted, and suddenly, admitting it didn’t seem so terrible anymore.   
  
Gently, she pulled away from him, catching hold of his hands as he considered trying to hold her still. She felt his cock as it left her, and she groaned, half missing it, but she was done. She was exhausted. She shifted, facing him voluntarily, taking hold of his shoulders.   
  
He looked at her, almost confused. For a man who had been grabbing her and forcing her and insulting her while she begged and pleaded for him to stop, he looked surprisingly... innocent. Her ass ached, but it felt good, too, and she leaned forward to kiss him. She kissed his full, sensual mouth, and his strong rounded jaw, and the corners of his soulful eyes and down to his strong neck, and he tasted of hot metal, and she could barely stand how much she loved him. “Thank you, Doctor,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you for making love to me. I needed it so badly.”   
  
The Doctor reached up and touched her cheek. “Peri,” he whispered. “I’d give you the universe.”   
  
Peri chuckled. “You have.”   
  
The Doctor looked smug. “I know.”


	5. Who Indeed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot, such as it is, is back in force now. And now it is clearly established that this story takes place between Attack of the Cybermen and Vengeance on Varos, before the Doctor had abandoned the idea making the Chamaeleon Circuit work. Which makes me wonder what happened with that pyramid Peri mentioned with such a smirk in the deleted scenes....

  
  
The evening was far from over. The Doctor took her into the shower and fucked her in the warm water while he made her drink glass after glass to keep her from getting dehydrated. (Again she was reminded she was not his first.) He’d lashed her to the wall with his by-now-terribly-familiar watch chain and brought her so close to orgasm so many times that she started screaming at him, calling him every dirty name in the English language and a few she was sure she’d picked up from the TARDIS, because even she wasn’t sure what she’d just said. He’d constricted her in blankets until she could barely move and made her suck him until she could feel the impression of him on her tongue hours afterward. About the time she was tempted to make him stop just out of sheer exhaustion, the Doctor blasted her with one last orgasm, and then stopped on his own.   
  
She fell into a stupor in his arms, his fingers lightly tracing through her hair, listening to the two hearts pulsing in his chest until her own fell into rhythm and the world went black and still and there was nothing but exhausted contentment.   
  
When she opened her eyes, the Doctor was up and getting dressed, already wrapped in his trousers and his white shirt. Peri was disappointed. He was so much more handsome naked. His clothes distracted from his face. She sighed.   
  
The Doctor grinned when he saw her awake. “Good morning, pulchritudinous Peri,” he said. “Pretty, pleasing, pleasant Peri.”   
  
Peri rolled her eyes. “Quit looking so blasted pleased with yourself.”   
  
The Doctor flopped back into bed next to her. “I am pleased with myself,” he purred. “I feel fantastic.” He pulled her into his arms. “You really can’t imagine what a relief it is to know that I haven’t gone completely barmy. I thought I was turning into.... Well. You’ve seen what can happen when a Time Lord goes mad.”   
  
Peri shuddered, thinking of the Master.   
  
“You have no idea how pleased I am to know that it was all your fault.”   
  
Peri looked up, indignant. “MY fault?”   
  
“But of course!” the Doctor said. “It was impossible for me to have any kind of untoward desires, such inequity is unbecoming in one so fabulous. It really is comforting to know that it was all because you’re simply one sick puppy.”   
  
“I’m...! You are...! Ugh!” Peri could barely contain her fury. Her hands closed into fists and she braced herself to try and shove him out of the bed. But he grabbed her wrists and pushed her down onto the pillows. He grinned down at her, regarding the fury in her eyes for a moment, before leaning down to kiss her.   
  
The kiss was focused and methodical, trickling through her whole body as the Doctor explored her mouth and bit at her lips. It ended sweetly, and Peri felt a responsive thrill through her ravaged body. “Mm,” she hummed. “I’m not sure I’m up to round two.”   
  
“I know,” the Doctor said without regret. “Later.” He bounced off the bed and started pulling on his waistcoat.  
  
Peri rolled up onto one arm and regarded him. “Were you really confused?” she said. “You seemed so inordinately pleased with yourself all the time.”   
  
“Has it occurred to you that that’s your fault, too?” the Doctor said. “I think you like me this way. In fact, I think you like me better than ever.” He regarded his hand and grinned down at it. “I don’t blame you. I am pretty terrific.”   
  
Peri looked away from him, annoyed.   
  
“I was confused,” the Doctor said, the arrogance banished from his voice. “I preferred to ignore it, or cover it up with bluster. I was frightened. I mean, I... I always knew this was in me, somewhere, but it’s never been so accessible before. And it was positively overwhelming. I wanted you and I hated you, and everything I wanted to do seemed so awful.”   
  
“It was,” Peri said.  
  
The Doctor glanced at her. “Then why didn’t you stop me?”   
  
“Because you’re right,” Peri admitted. “I am one sick puppy.”   
  
The Doctor laughed. “Then I must be one cool cat,” he grinned.   
  
“A fat cat.”   
  
The Doctor glared at her and went back to the bed, where he slapped her face, gently. “You’re just ASKING for trouble, aren’t you?”  
  
Peri ducked against the pillows, pushing him away, but her face split into a grin. The Doctor snatched at her wrists. She tried to struggle away, but he really was stronger than she was. She gave up with a sigh, and he let her go. His Cheshire Cat grin bore down on her.   
  
“Would you quit looking like the cat that ate the canary?”   
  
The Doctor gazed down at her. “That would make you the canary,” he breathed. He kissed her once more, very lightly. “Get some rest, my little songbird. I doubt you’ll be able to walk normally for a least another day.” He stood up. “I have a few more things I think I can make sense of, now. I THINK I can get that chamaeleon circuit to stop the TARDIS turning into the most conspicuous thing possible on every planet we visit.”   
  
“If the TARDIS is anything like you,” Peri said, “I very much doubt it!” A thought struck her. “Does this mean you can get rid of that awful coat, now?”  
  
The Doctor looked at it pensively, gently touching the loud pink and yellow lapels. “No,” he said slowly.   
  
“No!” Peri forced herself upright. “But you yourself said, you know why everything seemed wrong,” she said. “So why keep something that doesn’t fit with anything when... we know how it all fits, now.”   
  
“I’m going to keep it,” the Doctor said. “As a reminder.”  
  
“A reminder of what?” Peri said glumly.   
  
“That I don’t know everything,” he said. He shifted his gaze to her. “And that I’m not always perfect. And if I don’t pay attention and listen to the needs of others, nothing is ever going to seem to fit.”  
  
Peri stopped and stared at him. It was a touching admission, and it made her heart swell for him.   
  
“Besides,” he said with another Cheshire grin. “It drives you positively crazy, and I rather like annoying you.”   
  
“Oh, you!” Peri threw her pillow at him. “You bastard!”   
  
“I know,” the Doctor said lightly. He tossed his coat over his shoulder as he sauntered out of the room.   
  
“I hate you!” Peri shouted after him.   
  
“I know!” he sang. She could hear him chuckling as he headed down the corridor.   
  
She wanted to chase after him with the pillow and smack the insufferable grin off his face, but he really had left her barely able to move. Sinking back onto the bed, Peri grabbed the pillow he had been using and pulled it under her head. She snuggled into it contentedly. It still smelled of him.


End file.
